Panel Proposal: Trianon Issues. III. The Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 and the Peacemaker American President Woodrow Wilson (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The birth of the Hungarian Soviet Republic on March 21, 1919 was the first serious consequence of the failure of Wilsonianism. It came as a shock to the peacemakers in Paris, among them President Woodrow Wilson. Events in Hungary seemed to indicate the spread of the dreaded “bacilli” of Bolshevism from Russia to the West. In the United States, it gave a new impetus to the “red scare.” Yet in this political atmosphere, the dominant personality, Wilson, and the other American plenipotentiaries at the Paris Peace Conference favored non-intervention and embraced a wait-and-see attitude during the 133 day-long reign of the communist Béla Kun and his regime. Wilson was aware of the fact that Bolshevism in Hungary rose out of national despair in the light of the aggression of the successor states. Wilson even declared that if he were a Hungarian, he would fight against the Romanian invaders. The Peace Conference was unable to make the Romanian forces retreat from the Tisza River line. On July 20, the Red Army embarked on an offensive to liberate the left bank of the Tisza, but it was beaten back. The defeat was the direct cause of the collapse of the Soviet Republic on August 1, 1919.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Panel Chair: Peter Pastor, PhD, is professor emeritus of history at Montclair State University, New Jersey. His publications, one monograph, and seven edited or co-edited books touch on some aspect of Hungarian history, including the diplomatic relations of Hungary with Russia and the USSR. He has published close to fifty articles during his academic career. His last edited book is Essays on World War I, was published in 2012. His latest essay, “Hungarian and Soviet Efforts to Possess Ruthenia, 1938−1945,” was published in the Fall 2019 issue the Historian.